Valve

When one thinks of Steam, its chat capabilities aren't often the first thing that comes to mind. Still, it's clear that Valve considers chat to be an integral part of Steam, as it now has its very own app. Valve has launched a new Steam Chat app on iOS and Android, allowing you to always have that aspect of Steam at your fingertips.

Apple is being criticized, even sued, for holding its App Stores so tightly to the point of being anti-competitive. Of course, it rightfully owns that App Store and until something drastic changes, what it says goes and app developers have no choice but to find ways to compromise. That seems to be the situation Valve found itself in last year with its Steam Link mobile app. Thankfully, that may now be a thing of the past as the app has popped up on the iTunes App Store again. Hopefully, for good this time.

Back at the end of March, Valve revealed - or at least teased - the Index, a new VR headset it's been working on behind the scenes. That teaser didn't come with any significant information on capabilities or hardware requirements, but it did suggest that we could look forward to learning more in May. With May now just around the corner, Valve announced today that the headset will go up for pre-order tomorrow.

In launching its own games store and attempting to unseat Valve from the top of the digital distribution heap, Epic has ruffled its share of feathers within the PC gaming community. Epic started out by offering developers and publishers an 88%/12% revenue split on game sales - meaning that Epic only keeps 12% of the revenue from each game sold, far better than the 30% Steam keeps. Then Epic decided to take things one step further and started pursuing exclusivity deals for its own store.

The European Commission announced today that it has sent a Statement of Objection to Valve and five PC games publishers concerning their practices of geo-blocking games across the EU. Region locking, of course, has always been a headache for gamers, particularly those who live in regions where game prices typically run higher than those in other regions. It seems the European Commission wants this practice to end, at least within the confines of the EU.

Following months of rumors, Valve teased its own virtual reality hardware called Index late last week. A Steam product page for the VR headset leaked soon after, and now Valve has confirmed its launch plans for the product, stating that it will fully unveil the Index VR headset on May 1 and launch it for purchase later on this summer. Pre-orders are expected to start next month.

For several months now, rumors have been building about Valve working on its own virtual reality hardware — completely separate from the Vive, which was jointly developed by the game company HTC. Now Valve is letting the cat out of the bag. Friday night saw the release of a simple teaser for the Valve Index headset, along with the line "Upgrade your experience" and a presumed release date of May 2019.

In November 2018, Valve released a digital card game called Artifact that hasn't progressed quite the way it expected. Relatively few players are still playing the game only a few months after it launched, many complaining about microtransactions and other issues that make Artifact less than appealing. Now Valve is back with an announcement: it is pausing game updates to focus on 'deep-rooted issues.'

Epic Games is disrupting the gaming market and, just like any disruption, not everyone's too happy about it. It's easy enough to see the appeal of Epic's battle cry: better profits for developers and more choices for users. But in order to effect any significant change, Epic Games is employing some business strategies to get developers on its side. Those same strategies, however, are causing gamers and even some developers to draw the line in the sand, splitting the gaming community into sometimes very vocal camps.

Valve is redesigning the Steam store's Library page, the company has revealed, as well as introducing a new Events feature. The change was announced at the Game Developers Conference today, where Valve explained that users will soon see a new Library page design that presents more information at a glance and makes it easier to jump back into games.

Epic Games almost started to become the shining beacon in the gaming industry with its launch of the very developer-friendly Epic Games Store. Thanks to its zeal to get developers and games onboard, however, it has started to be painted in a less favorable light. The latest controversy the game publisher has found itself in involves accusations of spying, for China even. The company naturally denies the admittedly flimsy association but does own up to peeking into the Steam data stored on PCs.

In an age of user reviews, the practice of review bombing has become a serious problem. The tactic involves large groups of people leaving negative reviews in an effort to ruin a product's review score, and nowhere has it been more apparent than on Valve's Steam marketplace. The last few years have seen the company take steps to fight review bombing, which is less about evaluating a game and more about retaliation, and now they're adding a new tool to the arsenal.